fight through the night. i'm al sharpton. "hardball" starts right now.

morgan college, loyola and johns hopkins, they decided they were going to stop taking no for answer answer and they were going to get this thing done. by this point, other businesses in the downtown, including drug steers, even some other theaters, they were already getting desegregated. but the northwood theater was a holdout. the students and the civil rights activists ramped up their protests that february. they ramped up into a confrontation that looked like this. on the left there, the white guy with the cigar is obviously from the theater, he is standing in the door of the theater, telling this orderly cue of would-be black patrons, no, you are not getting in. this is from the baltimore sun at the time. they kept up their demand to be let in, day after day. the theater kept saying no. the police started arresting people. at first by the dozens and ultimately by the hundreds as these protests stretched on increasing in size for a week. the baltimore sun said the

police started to run out of vehicles to transport those who were being arrested. at first by the dozens and ultimately by the hundreds as these protests stretched on increasing in size for a week. the baltimore sun said the police started to run out of vehicles to transport those who were being arrested. to get an idea of how many people were being arrested. look at this picture from the city jail in baltimore. this is obviously the women's quarters, this is in the midst of those protests, that is how many people were getting arrested. the police and the city government, and the people who owned the theater, they met at baltimore city hall, to trying to figure out what to do. groups of students and protesters picketed. black students, and white students and all sorts of different religious groups

throughout the city. it's now a huge pain in the butt for the city of baltimore. the students were filling up the jail. some of the students studying in jail, this photo was circulated widely at the time. eventually after increasing publicity and increasing annoyance and protracted negotiations, the city was persuaded to drop the high bail for all of those demonstrators that were arrested. and the demonstrators were let out. that day that they were let out, the northwood theater announced it would desegregate so everybody could sit together on february 22nd, 1963 and watch that terrible disney movie. around the same time in the state of georgia, some young activists turned up in sumpter county, georgia, they turned up there in february 1963 and

started organizing desegregation efforts there in georgia. the white backlash was such a radical backlash that their response to nonviolent direct action protests in their city, protests like were happening all over the south, their response was to arrest protest leaders and charge them with sedition. essentially with plotting an iner is eks to overthrow the government. and that was a capitol offense, a death penalty offense. for organizing nonviolent protests. they charged activists with capital crimes for which they would be hanged. the first four civil rights workers were arrested that summer. the gentleman you can see here in some of this footage, he's also an activist, he turned up at the courthouse initially to support the four civil rights workers. georgia responded by also

arresting him and charging him with the same thing. ultimately there were five of them charged with potentially death penalty offenses for organizing protests. ultimately it was that fall. a three judge panel that ruled that that georgia sedition law was unconstitutional. all five activists be released as well as a 14-year-old girl who had been held in solitary confinement. that was early 1963. in april 1963, coretta scott king had just given birth to her fourth child, bernice. she was just days old when her father, reverend dr. martin luther king, jr. was arrested on good friday in birmingham alabama that april. that arrest is remembered because while he was in jail in birmingham, a group of mostly white clergy in alabama spoke

out and published an ad calling on dr. martin luther king to stop the protests, to work inside the system and stop organizing these demonstrations. to stop being the outside agitator, he responded with a letter from the birmingham jail which he wrote longhand in the margins of the newspaper in which he was able to read the ad and read the stories of his fellow ministers criticizing his tactics. his arrest was one component of a big activist plan for birmingham that year. birmingham was seen as being among the most impossible places for progress. it was the most stubborn, the most violent, the most rigidly opposed to desegregation. the plan was to push there in one of the worst places notice country. and see what happened. see how they responded to pressure. and after what they thought was a slow start of sit-ins and protests in the first eight days a total of 150 people had been arrested and taken to jail, that sounds like a lot, but for the time it was disappointingly low, after that, what they perceived

to be a slow start in birmingham, on april 12th, dr. king was arrested himself, and 50 others were arrested with him. dr. king was released by april 20th, by may 2nd, birmingham activists applied for a parade permit. the government said no. when may 2nd dawned, something happened in that city that day, it seems like the organizers did not expect. and nobody still can quite explain, which is that not only hundreds and thousands of people turn out to demonstrate in birmingham that day, permit or not. but thousands of the people who turned out that day were kids, children as young as 12, 10, 8 were out on the streets in huge numbers. and the police chief in birmingham at that time, when we talk about as a nation those scarring images of fire hoses and dogs being turned on peaceful protesters in the civil rights movement, it is not always remembered when we talk about those images to each other.

it's not always remembered that the most horrifying images of fire hoses and dogs, were from the time that fire hoses and dogs were turned on kids. they not only hit kids with fire hoses. this famous image of walter gadson being bitten by a police dog, he was a high schoolkid. he was one of the older kids at that protest. and they did not just unleash that violence on those kids. they arrested them. they put hundreds and hundreds of children in jail in birmingham, they used school buses to pick up kids from the demonstration that -- they had hit them with fire hoses and dogs at the demonstration and arrested them, they hauled those kids into the jail. they filled the jail cells, dozens of kids crammed into individual adult cells. they put hundreds of kids into pens. children, and they held them in jail. and they set bail for them. of course, the way the bail

works, is that it's something that you pay to the jail. you pay bail to whatever entity is holding you, to get yourself out of jail. but it's kind of a promise, right? you're giving them money as a way of saying, thank you for letting me out of jail right now, i will give you this money to hold because it's a promise. you hold this money, and that money stands as my promise that i will come back to stand trial. if i don't come back, at least you got the money. it's like a guarantee you'll come back, right? >> you have to raise bail money, if you're planning to show up for your trial, you expect you should be able to get that bail money back. the singer harry bellafonte was very close to a lot of national civil rights leaders at the time, including martin luther king, and his family, in harry bellafonte's auto biography, he writes about these protests and how there was this national shock and horror at seeing these images, at how these protesters were brutalized in birmingham. there was the practical nuts and bolts dollars and sense matter

of raising the bail money to get the protesters out of jail. he raised $50,000 himself, the unions stepped in and kicked up a lot of money. a black store workers union in new york. they sent tens of thousands of dollars to the jail to serve as bail money. with all those hundreds of children in jail, when they totalled up the bill for bail, it was staggering. something like $160,000 they needed to raise to bail out the children. that is in 1963, that is not adjusted for inflation. do you realize how much money that was at that time. and you know who coughed up money in a really big way? nelson rockefeller. nelson rockefeller, not only governor of new york at the time, but also a rockefeller, and he asked dr. king's private attorney to meet him at a chase manhattan bank in new york city, on the corner of 47th street and 6th avenue, about three blocks from here.

they met there on a saturday morning, nelson rockefeller, met dr. king's attorney at the bank vault. the guards opened up the vault, governor rockefeller walked into the vault and came out with two giant stacks of plastic wrapped cash and said i hope this is enough. it was $100,000 in crisp new bills. remember, this was for bail money. this was not a gift, this was not a donation, the governor was giving this as bail money for the kids and he was expecting it back. before he let dr. king's friend and speech writer and personal attorney leave with the giant stacks of plastic wrapped cash that day, he had him sign a promissory note, and that made it an official loan. i have loaned you $100,000 in cash, by signing below, you indicate that you will pay it back to me. dr. king's attorney signed it and left with a big suitcase full of cash to get the kids out of prison. and then late that summer, when

it came time to write a big speech for dr. king, that man who signed the promissory note for the $100,000 to get the elementary schoolkid prisoners out of prison released to their parents so they could go back to school. that man who you see over dr. king's right shoulder, suggested that that promissory note experience he had at that bank vault on that saturday morning in new york city with the governor might make a metaphor for a big speech. on august 28th, 1963 you can when that speech was delivered. the civil rights leader said the founders of our nation in writing our nation's founding documents were signing a promissory note to which every american was to fall heir, a promise that all men would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. it's obvious today that america has defaultsed on this promissory note in so far as her citizens of colors are concerned. although black americans had

been given a bad check, it had come back marked insufficient funds, he had refused to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity in this nation. he said, we have come to cash this check. we think of that speech and that march as a singular event. and there is in fact nothing like it in our history. but it is less of a pillar and more like a peak, it is a summit that was reached. it was a moment in an ongoing movement that was well underway and not nearly over by the time that happened. and that march, and that speech like the campaign to desegregate the northwood theater in baltimore, and those protests with the terrifying consequences in america's georgia, that march was a tactic dreamed up in realtime by real imperfect people working together as a body in motion making incremental decisions about what to do next.

about what might work. when we come back, we will be joined by the man who signed that promissory note in that bank vault that day. dr. martin luther king's friend, speech writer and personal attorney. [ lane ] do you ever feel like you're growing old waiting for your wrinkle cream to work? clinically proven neutrogena® rapid wrinkle repair. it targets fine lines and wrinkles with the fastest retinol formula available. you'll see younger looking skin in just one week.

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when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that

day when all of god's children, black men and white men jews and gentiles, protestants and catholics, will be able to join hands and sing flee at last, free at last, thank god all mighty, we are free at last. >> joining us now is a man who helped right that speech. he was a personal attorney and friend and speech writer for dr. martin luther king, jr., he worked with him closely until his death. he also teaches at the university of san francisco. mr. clarence jones, thank you for joining us tonight, sir, it's an honor to have you here. >> thank you, rachel. >> go ahead, sir. >> i wanted to say, you got it right, except that in signing the promissory note, it was a demand, which meant the promissory note is payable any time the creditor wants to be

paid. when i left the bank, i was so surprised by this, that i called harry bellafonte and said, harry, you didn't tell me i'd have to sign a demand promissory note. he said, well, better you than me. i said, but you have more money than i do. but in any event it was done, and we were appreciative of it, i took the money to birmingham, and the following, that was on a saturday, the following tuesday, there was a messenger that came to my office with an envelope marked personal and confidential, and the envelope and there was the promissory note i signed and it said paid in full. obviously i didn't pay it, it had been paid. that was a profound experience. first of all, a very great gesture on the part of the rockefeller family.

to make it clear, i hear references about my contribution to dr. king's speech. dr. king wrote most of his speeches, i was honored together with the very dear, beloved friend of mine and a major adviser to him by the name of stanley levenson. periodically to provide suggested material, in connection with the speech he gave on the march on washington, i had provided him with a summary of ideas and summary of language that he had previously discussed. so it wasn't as if i was providing him with some creative ideas that were solely mine. i was more like a secretary who was summarizing and putting in the form that could be used for the speech, the opening paragraphs, little did i know, until i was sitting listening to him, i was standing some 50 feet behind him, when i was listening very carefully, i said, oh, my god, i guess he decided to use those opening paragraphs.

to those paragraphs, which constituted the first seven paragraphs. to those opening paragraphs, he seemlessly added his own additional paragraphs, and it was when he was speaking his own additional paragraphs that he was interrupted from the written speech that he had prepared. and he was interrupted by mahalia jackson who shouted to him, tell him about the dream, martin. tell him about the dream. most people don't know that the speech which is so frequently celebrated over the years, the i have a dream speech, that from the time mahalia jackson interrupted him, until the end of the speech, the entire balance of the speech was spontaneous and ex-tem pain yous, it was not the speech that he had written and prepared in longhand, but for the initial seven paragraphs i suggested and his own paragraphs he added.

it was an amazing circumstance. and today, for example, it was very difficult for me to be there. and a lot of emotions, i said to my dear friend ambassador andy young, we put our arms around one another. i said, andy, i started to cry last night. he said, yeah, so did i. and i thought that oh, my god, i was 32 years of age, dr. king was 34. and i thought of so, so many people that i knew personally who were not there. i'm not just talking about randolph and rusten, people you see in the pictures, and some of the labor leaders. i'm thinking about people who were decisive in the civil rights movement, who made -- who were part of that whole tapestry. and we don't have the time in this program for me to call the role, but -- an example like

fanny lou in greenwood, mississippi, james orange an activist in birmingham, alabama. jose williams. i thought of those people, i thought of baker, and so when i thought of them, i began to cry. i began to cry, because i knew that there contribution had changed america, by the way, i said this directly to the president of the united states. i reminded him yesterday when i had the honor to see him in the reception, even when he was out in california. i -- and you know, he knows this, that when he was elected, for example and there were several people at a faculty home celebrating the election of barack obama. and people in the room started to cry, and someone said to me, professor jones, did you think you live long enough to see an african-american elected president? i said no. but excuse me, my tears are not

for the election of barack obama's president. my tears are for all of those persons that i personally knew, personally knew -- i called them wintertime soldiers, who made his election possible. and the president today and even earlier, he reflected that in the very poignant and moving speech. i thought he gave an exceptionally good speech today. it was balanced, it was right on the money, and near the end i could hear his moving over to be like a baptist preacher, i knew he had more sense than to completely go there. it was a beautiful speech. it was balanced. and as some of your guests have said, i heard on -- i don't know whether it was your show but the chris hayes show, is that we're realists. the dream substantially has been realized, john lewis said, anybody would have to be blind,

deaf and not recognized in 50 years, there are no signs colored in white in this country. there are signs that are gone. there are cracks in the dream. there are obvious cracks in the dream, most of those cracks have to do with the economic opportunity. the president is aware of that, those of us who work so tirelessly with dr. king are aware of that and -- but it would be a mistake. it would be it would dishonor the tireless work of those people i said who are no longer with us, and certainly dishonor the dream of dr. king, is to say not much has happened. the dream hasn't changed much, the dream has substantially changed many things. the speech that dr. king gave was a summons, was a call to the conscience of america to be the best that we can do, particularly following the three or four months of previous street demonstrations that

occur. between april 1963 and august 28th, 1963, there are more than 1200 demonstrations that occurred in 36 states, precipitated by the -- you know, the demonstrations in birmingham, or by the brutal reaction, the conscience of america was shocked and that dr. king knew this, so when he was speaking about the dream, he was calling attention to america to see the moral, the immorality of the contradiction between the way in which 12% of the population is treated, people of color, and the precepts and principals of those who shined in our declaration of independence. that's what the speech was. when he said the dream, of course, if you look at it from a syntax standpoint, he wasn't talking about then august 28th,

he said i dream. he's using the future tense. i dream that one day my four children will -- that reflected his profound prophetic confidence in the american people, recognizing that the goodness in the american people would not sustain the continuation of racial segregation. >> professor clarence jones, dr. martin luther king jr.'s attorney and adviser. you appear in the new documentary the march, which is airing on pbs stations in the country. thank you so much for being with us, sir. >> thank you so much. >> thank you. much more ahead about this huge national ceremony and about, of course, the potential for military action in syria. which is the other story going on in the midst of this commemoration today which is itself a huge, huge deal.

part of the thing about being president is that some days you get to take time off. you get a few days vacation, and while you're taking those few days, everybody on the other side of the aisle loses their mind and screams about you taking those days off. then when you go back to work, sometimes your workdays are just nuts. some days you have to go straight from the steps of the lincoln memorial, where you have to give the speech honoring the greatest modern american speech in history, given from that exact spot 50 years ago to the minute. you have to go straight from that not at all intimidating no pressure situation into a long interview, where you get hammered with questions about the military strike that you are planning in the middle east. all in one afternoon. >> syria, how close are you to authorizing a military strike? and can you assure the american people that by doing so, given iraq and afghanistan, that the united states will not get

bogged down in yet another war halfway around the world? >> well, first of all, i have not made a decision, i have gotten options from our military, had extensive discussions with the national security team. >> telling pbs news hour he has not made a decision about launching a military strike on syria, he did say his administration has concluded that chemical weapons were used in syria, and he says that the rebel forces there could not have been responsible for the chemical weapons use, he says it has to have been the assad government. >> we do not believe that given the delivery systems using rockets that the opposition could have carried out these attacks, we have concluded that the syrian government in fact carry these out, if that's so, there need to be international consequences. we're consulting with our allies, we're consulting with the international community. and i have no interest in any kind of open ended conflict in

syria, we do have to make sure that when countries break, international norms on weapons like chemical weapons that could threaten us, they are held accountable. >> with all due respect, what does it accomplish, the signals the american people are getting, this would be a limited strike of a limited duration, if it's not going to do that much harm to the assad regime, what have you accomplished? >> i have not made a decision, i think it's important that in, in fact we make a choice to have repercussions for the use of chemical weapons, the assad regime, which is involved in a civil war, trying to protect itself, will have received a pretty strong signal that it better not do it again. >> pretty strong signal. well, today britain brought a resolution to the u.n. security council that would authorize the use of military force against syria.

russia and china are on the u.n. security council and they are still balking in that proposal. even at home in britain the british proposal to hit syria is not going anywhere yet. the british prime minister had hoped to get his own parliament to vote to authorize the use of force by tomorrow. but today the labor party pushed back really hard and said they want to wait to hear from the u.n. weapons inspectors before they make any decision about moving forward. they're still on the ground doing their work in syria, investigating whether chemical weapons allegations there are true, are based in fact. the u.n. secretary-general said the inspectors will need to be there a couple more days to finish their work on the ground. if china and russia are ever going to come on board to authorize any sort of unified international condemnation of what syria appears to have done, there's no chance they will do that before the inspectors have made their report and submitted their proof. here at home we learned late

today, the white house is planning on briefing some members of congress on the situation. the leadership in congress, and the top members of the committees that handle security issues, the white house is going to brief them reportedly as to whether congress should actually cut short its own vacation and come back to washington enmass to debate the possibility that we would use force in syria, so far there's been no announcement of any kind about that. but nearly 100 members of congress have signed on to the letter we reported on on last night's show, saying they stand ready and willing to come back to play the role the constitution says congress is supposed to play in making decisions about war, they stand ready to share with the president in the decision making burden about what to do next in syria. for his heart, john boehner sent a letter to the president tonight asking him lots of questions about syria, and talking about what an important role congress should play in this process, but has john boehner called congress back into session to play a role in this process? no, he has not. he's making noise, but he's not actually doing anything. so far. watch this space.

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foreign threat today, we don't read very much about communism as a threat to our internal security any more. what is your view on the seriousness of the common situation here at home? >> i think it's the most critical problem we have to face up to on internal security. the communist party of the united states is an arm of the international conspiracy against freedom and against god. >> a conspiracy against god. you know who hated the march on washington in august 1963? the fbi. j. edgar hoover head of the fbi for decades at that point, j. edgar hoover in many ways hated the civil rights movement, and hated dr. martin luther king in particular. he was convinced the entire movement was a communist front manipulated by russia to overthrow the united states of america. david korn at mother jones magazine published a reminder that two days after the march on washington, two days after the i

have a dream speech, the fbi circulated a memo summing up their reaction to the event and how they plan to respond to it. tim winer turned this up for his fbi history. the fbi memo two days after the speech said, in the light of king's powerful demogoging speech, we must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous negro of the future in this nation, from the standpoint of communism, the negro and national security. that memo, the most dangerous negro memo was circulated all over washington, capitol hill to the white house. official washington's view of martin luther king, especially after the i have a dream speech, he was a communistic threat to this nation. the march was in late august, that fbi memo was two days after the march, by october of that

year, bobby kennedy, the attorney general had personally authorized two j. edgar hoover fbi requests for unlimited bugging and wiretapping of dr. king. eight wiretaps, 16 bugs, his phones, hotel rooms, bedrooms, and they used the sound that they collected, they used the information they collected in those wiretaps to try to destroy dr. king both professionally and personally. he was awarded the nobel peace prize, j. edgar hoover personally convened a press conference in his office in which he personally called martin luther king a notorious liar. hoover's intelligence chief put together a series of tapes that he said were recorded in dr. king's bedrooms and hotel rooms, the fbi intelligence chief wrote a letter that he put together with those tapes and he sent it in a package to dr. king's home. king, look into your heart, there's only one way out for you. you better take it before your filthy abnormal fraudulent self

is beared to the nation. that's what the fbi sent to king's house with a package of tapes they said were made from the bugs they put in his bedrooms, a letter threatening him and essentially telling him to kill himself. dr. king's wife is the one who opened that package when it arrived at their home. when we commemorate the civil rights movement, we're not just remembering a movement and its tactics and the history of how they fought, you can't commemorate it truly without being honest about what it was they were fighting against. the heroism of the civil rights movement, has echos in heroic activism today. those heroes of the movement would not have had to be heroic, if there hadn't been a world or raid against them, a very powerful world including at times all of the powers that be in our country. it is inspiring now to see echos of civil rights heroism in our country today. it is unsettling to see echos in our country today of what they fought against. joining us now is charles ogletree, thank you very much for being with us tonight.

>> happy to be with you, rachel. >> why was dr. king perceived as a threat, such a dangerous threat to national security, particularly after that speech. >> a lot of this was in j. edgar hoover's mind. he did it not just with king, malcolm x, harry bellafonte who was supported. what made it even worse, if you think about it, bobby kennedy played a role as the attorney general, looking into these cases, talking about indicting people. they did nothing wrong, nonviolence, very peaceful, and yet they were threats to america according to j. edgar hoover. when you look at the kinds of fights that are happening now on civil rights issues, narrowly defined. for example, this fight is over voting rights in north carolina and texas. there is attorney general eric holder weighing in. that's happening at the official level.

how much do you feel like the unofficial response, the sort of movement response, the activist response, even the political response is in inheritance from that civil rights movement, do we reinvent ourselves every time we fight these guys. >> it's different, i've never seen an attorney general as great as eric holder. he's going after arizona a couple years ago, he's going after texas, going to go after north carolina, i have no doubt about that somebody who has that integrity, says the government is here to protect people, not to go after people, he's talking about reducing sentences. he is a person from my point of view who obama made a wise choice, playing the first black american to be the attorney general. that means he's going to be changing the whole dialogue, i hope whoever follows him, will have the same sense that i am

the government lawyer, i'm going to decide what the law's going to be, i'm going to be the enforcer, i'm going to convict people who are committing crimes, but i'm also going to be responsible for someone who is concerned for ethical and reasonable treatment. >> in the president's speech today, he talked a lot about what became possible in this country because people marched. and there's always an interesting dialect between inside and outside tactics. between powerful and calling on the powers that be. how do you feel like, the first black president with the internal procivil rights strategies that are being pursued, how did they interact with outside pressure? >> i think it's good, i think they are in a sense what king dreamed about. the idea of being a black president, the attorney general concerned about justice and fairness, yet you think about it, king was a minister, not a politician, didn't run for office, not a mayor.

but he had these conversations with kennedy, he had conversations with lbj, and because of that the moral force of his command about what should be right, about ending discrimination, creating opportunities, ending the opportunity for people to not vote, all those were part of what king was able to do, and i think that made johnson a better president, we don't know how great he was, he's a terrific president. 50 years from now, we'll say wow! voting rights act, civil rights act. fair housing act. first black supreme court justice appointed in '67. that's lyndon baines johnson, because the pressure from outside from martin luther king made a big difference. that's why king was there when thurgood marshall was sworn in. both johnson and kennedy are people who learned from the movement, instead of running away from it, johnson embraced it, make me do what i have to do. >> he was not on a trajectory to do those things anyway. recognized that he could become one with that movement. >> what's smart about it, he said look, by doing this, the voting rights act, the civil

rights act, thurgood marshall, the supreme court, we the democrats are probably lost to the south, he was right about that, it was a big reaction to that. it made america a better place. those opportunities would never have existed if not have been for lyndon baines johnson. >> you taught both michelle and barack obama at harvard law school. i know you're still close to the first family, and both of them, you're in frequent communication with the president. i don't want you to tell tales on your friend. do you have any insight into why he has seen it to be so important to foreground martin luther king so often? he's talked about him dozens of times. he has the bust of king right next to the bust of lincoln looking down on all liz discussions in the oval office. >> it's very important. you think about king -- you think about lincoln, he gave his announcement to run for president in springfield, illinois, the same place lincoln did. he has that bust of lincoln

there, he's cited lincoln in many of his speeches since he's been president. he's looking at men that are sacrificing whatever they have to do to make the country better. the reality is, both of them were victims of assassinations, luckily president obama has been successful and not faced it the last two terms. he's trying to say, i'm trying to be not better than but as good as these individuals who took it upon themselves to change our views about race. and he's been able to do that. >> charles ogletree, harvard law school professor. i was really hoping i could get you here to talk tonight. >> i'm glad to be here. >> appreciate it. >> we'll be right back. [ man ] look how beautiful it is. ♪ honey, we need to talk. we do? i took the trash out. i know. and thank you so much for that. i think we should get a medicare supplement insurance plan. right now? [ male announcer ] whether you're new to medicare or not, you may know it only covers about 80%

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only one person spoke both at the march on washington in 1963 and again today at its 50th anniversary. and the story of that man's role in the first march will blow your mind. this is a man that did not show up in washington 50 years ago to make nice. that largely untold story and some amazing tape about what happened is next. stay with us.

this is patrick jay o 'boyle, born to immigrant parents, he became a catholic

priest in 1921, he was the archbishop of washington, when harry truman was nominated to office, he gave the benediction. in 1963, when the largest ever demonstration took place in washington's it was the archbishop who gave the invocation for the march, and the bishop was thought of as a progressive. a key player in desegregating the schools in d.c. and of course, it was an honor to lead the prayer at the event. he did do it. but he set conditions. a number of people scheduled to give speeches the day provided planned texts on who they would say. that is how we knew that dr. king didn't plan the "i have a dream" portion of his speech that day. he delivered another speech before his remarks. but the condition that

archbishop o 'boyle set on his participation of the events that day had to do with the advance text of the speech that had not been given out by dr. king, but by another person at the event that day. a younger person to give a speech that day. according to the copies, he was due to say that day, we will not wait for the president. the justice department, nor the congress, but we will take matters into our own hands and create a source of power outside any national structure that could and would assure us a victory. his speech said we will march through the south, through the heart of dixie, the way sherman did of the we shall pursue our own scorched earth policy. of course, the way sherman marched through there was to burn down every splinter of it. but the archbishop said he would not appear at a march at which those words would be spoken. so they prevailed upon the

younger speaker's speech that day, and the younger person agreed, those parts didn't stay in the speech. and the young man gave the speech, and even the softened version of his speech was the sharpest and most angry of the speeches on that landmark day. >> the time will come when we will not confine our march into washington. we'll march through the south, through the streets of jackson, through the streets of danville, through the streets of cambridge, through the streets of birmingham. because we will march with the spirit of love and with the spirit of dignity that we have shown here today. by the forces of our demands, our determination, and our numbers, we shall splinter the segregated south into a thousand

pieces and put them into the image of god and democracy. we must say wake up, america! wake up, for we will not stop and cannot be stopped. we will not be patient. >> at 23 years old, that young man was the youngest to address the large crowd in 1963. and now today, 50 years later, the young speaker is the only speaker from that day in washington who is still with us. he is the only living speaker. and now today as congressman john louis, he spoke there again at the lincoln memorial just before the three presidents who were also in washington today to mark this anniversary. >> when i look out over this diverse crowd and survey the guests on this platform, i seemed to realize what otis redding is talking about, and

what dr. king preached about, this moment has been a long time coming but a change has come. good thursday morning, right now on "first look" is a u.s. military strike on syria imminent? we're live in the region. >> four major illnesses tied to a lack of sleep and 9 million americans taking prescription pills? the results of a five year sleep study. send a text to a driver and you could be held responsible if there's a car accident. i'll talk to colonel jack jacobs. plus as fast food workers across america prepare to strike today, taking in the dream 50 years later. a classified payload heads to space and an albino alligator gets acupuncture for ba